KL Rahul. (Photo Source: BCCI)
Despite a brilliant start in the first ODI at Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai, Australia failed to capitalize as the visiting team was bundled for 188 runs only. In the absence of southpaw David Warner, Mitchell Marsh was sent to open the innings and the 31-year-old played some remarkable cricket to set the tone but the middle-order absolutely failed to put up a show.
Marsh scored 81 off 65 deliveries and based on his innings, Australia were expected to score at least 280 runs in the innings, but Mohammad Shami absolutely decimated their middle order, picking up three quick wickets of Josh Inglis, Cameron Green, and Marcus Stoinis. Talking of the same events, Stoinis after the match, revealed that the team might have been carried away by the kind of start Marsh provided.
The all-rounder also mentioned that the team should have batted just like KL Rahul did and he believes that everyone in the team needs to get better with their technique.
“To an extent, we might have gotten carried away watching Mitch bat and how well he struck them and then thinking the score might need to be higher than what was necessary.”
“There was a bit in the wicket. We need to be a bit better with our techniques and figure out how we’re going to play that. I think KL’s way of batting and blueprint looked about right,” Stoinis was quoted as saying by cricket.com.au.
We didn’t sum the conditions up well enough: Stoinis
The 33-year-old also stated that Australia didn’t assess the conditions well enough and that was one of the reasons behind their five-wicket defeat at the hands of India. He also mentioned that the Kangaroos were trying something different in the middle as they played with only three proper bowlers.
“We didn’t sum the conditions up well enough and didn’t score enough. We’re experimenting with a few different combinations, playing eight batters. We understand that if we’re going to play eight batters, we still need to play a certain way up until the 35th over or whatever it might be, and then when the time comes we can assert some authority on that with our back-end power hitters,” he added.
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